Readers' questions

In this post I try to answer some questions from my always overflowing mailbox.

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Three people asked about the meaning of their surnames: Oosting, Borgh and Hooijer.

The best place to find information about a surname is the Corpus of Family Names in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, though you can search this site in English, all information is in Dutch.

According to this corpus, Hooijer is a beroepsnaam, a name derived from an occupation. The name is derived from hooier, which means hay-maker.

There are many Hooijers listed in Genlias, the Dutch BMD database.

Borgh is a rare name in The Netherlands. There were only 22 people with that name in 1947, and 23 in 2007. (The name Borg is more common.) The corpus of family names states Borgh is an adresnaam, a name derived from a location. In this case the location is probably a manor-house in the north: borg(h) can mean manor-house (in the north, the names of many manor-houses end with -borg or -borgh). My dictionary lists a few other meanings of the Dutch word borg, including castle and surety.

Oosting is also listed as an adresnaam. It is probably derived from Oost, east, so it may mean someone from the east (not necessarily far to the east - the east side of the village, most likely). Another possibility is that the surname is derived from the name of a farm. The name is common in the northeast of the country, especially in the province Drenthe.

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Gerda asks about her ancestor, Gerrit Adrianus Vink. Unfortunately her request does not have enough information to positively identify Mr. Vink (dates, places and name of partner/parents are missing). Genlias only has one person with this name, though, so I'll assume this is the one Gerda is looking for (she will have to verify that herself):

Gerrit Adrianus Vink, son of Pieter Vink and Pietertje Greyn, born on 8 August 1888 in Piershil, married Dirkje Krijna van Rees, daughter of Jan van Rees and Krijna Maria Groeneweg, on 29 February 1912 in Klaaswaal.

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Raymond wants to know more about his ancestor Roosje de Lange. She was born 1882 in Den Haag, married to a Mr. Teitelbaum, emigrated, and remarried.

Scans of BMD records from Den Haag are online, but finding anything on their website is a daunting task, so I just include the birth record below.

The certificate states that Roosje, daughter of Nathan de Lange and Petronella Weijl, was born on 6 May 1882 in Den Haag.

I could not find a Teitelbaum-de Lange marriage in Den Haag, or in any major database. Maybe they married in Amsterdam (marriages are not online yet), or abroad. The population register of Den Haag (not online yet for the years we need) may have more information.

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I will answer more questions next month. Send me a message, or leave a comment, if you have a question that you want me to answer. Try to be specific in your question: The more specific the question is, the more useful the answer can be. If you just give me a surname all I can do is give you very general advise or point you to Genlias.

Postcard from Venlo: Retreat house "Manresa"

Men who wanted to go into retreat could do so in retreat house Manresa in Venlo. Manresa, run by Jesuits, was in use from 1908 until 1973, for men only.

This postcard was sent in March 1921, by someone who was in retreat here. It shows the recreation room of Manresa, with in the background the billiard room.

Postcard from Amsterdam

Last week, the Unesco added 21 new sites to its world heritage list. One of those sites was the seventeenth-century canal ring Area inside the Singelgracht, in Amsterdam. The Unesco describes the area as follows:

The historic urban ensemble of the canal district of Amsterdam was a project for a new 'port city' built at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. It comprises a network of canals to the west and south of the historic old town and the medieval port that encircled the old town and was accompanied by the repositioning inland of the city's fortified boundaries, the Singelgracht. This was a long-term programme that involved extending the city by draining the swampland, using a system of canals in concentric arcs and filling in the intermediate spaces. These spaces allowed the development of a homogeneous urban ensemble including gabled houses and numerous monuments. This urban extension was the largest and most homogeneous of its time. It was a model of large-scale town planning, and served as a reference throughout the world until the 19th century. [link]

One of the canals encircling the old town is the Keizersgracht (litt. Emperor's Canal) in Amsterdam. The postcard shows this canal.

Though there is an address on the back of the card, there is no stamp or date mark, and the card was probably never sent. The card is probably from the first decade of the 20th century.

Dutch archive news, July 2010

• Genlias has new baptisms from Zuid-Holland (Brielle), births from Zuid-Holland (major update), marriages from Drenthe (most towns) and Zuid-Holland (major update), and deaths from Zuid-Holland (Alblasserdam, Giessendam and Zuidwijk).
• The National Library of The Netherlands announced that Google will scan over 160,000 18th and 19th century books from their collection. These books will (eventually) become available on the websites of Google Books, Europeana, and of course the National Library.
• The Central Bureau for Genealogy launched a new blog (in Dutch) Migranten (Migrants), about the history of immigration into and emigration from The Netherlands.
• Another Dutch archive on Twitter: the archive of Gorinchem (@archGorinchem). See the complete list of tweeting archives.

Photo: Book-scanning machine, by Cory Doctorow.